Breakfast of Sick-o's (and a Thanksgiving Recap)

I have been feeling really sick with a sore throat for about 24 hours now. This may or may not have something to do with running myself too thin on Thanksgiving day and being a little dumb. We'll get to that in a few. Meanwhile, here is the breakfast I am currently enjoying to combat the illness in my throat.

Thank goodness I had some chamomile tea in my cabinet. I had 2 cups last night and I am on my first today. It is the only thing making my throat feel better. Next up is some iced tea to combat the stupid caffeine headaches I have been getting on days I don't work and thus do not drink coffee. I am in the process of weaning myself off coffee because I do not like being a slave to caffeine and having it ruin my weekend if I don't get it. And finally, Naked juice in the flavor of Power-C Machine for a dosage of Vitamin C. 8 oz doses of these three things should get me feeling right as rain immediately, right? Here's to wishful thinking. I'm not sure if I have any soup in the house so I may drag my butt to the kitchen long enough to make a small pot. I'm thinking some lentil soup might be yummy. But onto why I may have gotten sick.

For Thanksgiving at my Aunt and Uncle's house, I had offered to bring rolls and pumpkin pie. They were going to make me a Tofurkey roast along with some roasted vegetables. I had attempted to make Oh She Glow's Fluffy White Dinner Rolls when she first posted the recipe but had a major flop on my hands. I tried using all whole wheat pastry flour and for some reason the dough just didn't come together right. I had to keep adding flour and by the time they made it into the oven they were almost like biscuits. Delicious, but definitely not fluffy. Just to be safe I bought some rolls from the store and set out Wednesday night to attempt them again. I decided to try half whole wheat pastry four and half high gluten bread flour and this seems to have worked wonderfully. Let me tell you, most times I try to make anything with yeast I end up practically never wanting to touch the stuff again, but these turned out very yummy.

When they came out of the oven I didn't know what to do because I wanted to try one to make sure they turned out but I didn't want to mess up the presentation. In the end, a reassurance from my boyfriend after feeling their fluffy tops led us to the conclusion that they would be delicious and I left them as is.

Thursday morning I woke up bright and early to get a start on my pie. I also had lofty intentions of climbing a nearby mountain while the crust chilled, but I quickly ran out of time. The only other time I have made pie crust is last Thanksgiving and it turned out incredibly well for my first attempt but for some reason I was terrified I was going to mess it up this year. The crust and the pie recipes both come from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I love this book for baking for people who eat the S.A.D (Standard American Diet) and who are not as adventurous in the food they eat because the recipes are not exactly healthy and just try to recreate foods that taste good.

I gathered my crust ingredients:

And my 2 page long recipe:

And got to work. Using a food processor, I have found that this recipe is really not very difficult but both times I have made it I have had to add extra water. I think it is because I use whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose.

Once the dough came together, I divided it and wrapped each half in plastic wrap as a thin disk and refrigerated for at least 30 minutes. Here's where my day may have taken a turn for the worse. Actually, let me take you back about 45 minutes before the disks came together. The recipe calls for everything to be chilled for 30 minutes before beginning; the flour, the water, the sugar, the shortening. This was good since I started the day with a sink full of dishes from the night before. After putting everything in the freezer I set to work on the dishes. I finished in about 20 minutes and debated what to do with my remaining 10 minutes. I had been listening to the radio and someone had mentioned bloody mary's while cooking and I thought, hmmm, I have some champagne in my fridge and a bunch of citrus that is getting rather old, maybe I'll make a mimosa. And so I did. I squeezed some oranges, limes, lemons and grapefruits and made myself a little mimosa.

And it was delicious. I sipped on it while I made the crusts and felt all kinds of jolly holiday spirit. After the crusts were in disk form and chilling in the fridge, it was about 10 o'clock and I decided I'd really like to get a workout in. So I changed my close and jogged to 24 hour fitness. That's about a 20 minute slow jog. Then I did resistance training and weight lifting for 35 minutes and headed home, another 20 minute jog. It was on this final 20 minute jog that I realized the silliness of my ways. Have you figured out what I did wrong? In my business in the kitchen and wanting to get in a workout, I had been up for 4 hours, worked out for 1 hour 15 minutes and fueled my body with only....a mimosa. Yeah, I hadn't eaten anything. I was going to eat when I got home and I had just been so intent on getting the pie crust done that I had neglected food to fuel my workout. When I got home I was in a weird sort of place. I was super in need of food but I was so worked up that I didn't want anything. I had a tiny bite of an energy bar but found it was way too sweet. I tried a slice of bread and that was ok. I smeared some peanut butter on it and that did the trick enough to let me get in the shower and cool down. I am the sort of person who gets really rosy cheeks just running for a minute, so 20 minutes of jogging really gets me worked up. The shower cooled me down and then I proceeded to make a real breakfast. I made a wrap out of a tortilla, tofu scramble, tofurkey slices and salsa with a Trader Joe's hash brown on the side. And I felt much better. Mind you, this was now 12:15 on Thanksgiving when we were having dinner at 3, but it had to be done. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. Do you ever work out and over do it and then feel the effects the rest of the day? I get this a lot. If I work out too hard I feel a bit of a headache and just a little off the rest of the day. I tried to fix myself by drinking tons of water but to no avail. This coupled with the aforementioned caffeine withdrawals led to a headache the entire day. Fortunately it did not ruin my mood and I was able to finish the pie with only 15 minutes to spare before I left the house.

If you managed to read all of the above, you are my new best friend. To reward you, here is the finished pie and my Thanksgiving dinner.

Tofurkey roast, cranberry sauce made by my mom, roasted yams, shallots, brussel sprouts and carrots, roll with earth balance, roasted potatoes and tofurkey gravy. Yummy! Just about everyone tried the tofurkey roast and was quite impressed, even though they are all omni's!

Pumpkin pie with Soyatoo whipped cream.

And finally, I leave you with a poster in my Aunt and Uncle's kitchen that I am madly in love with. It is from World War II I believe. I wish more people lived like this.

Not to mention how great it would be if the FDA could still say things like this. Can you imagine the FDA putting out posters saying to eat less meat? They would be crucified!

Thanks for joining me on my Thanksgiving and I hope yours was fabulous!